Beauty's Journey
by bookfaerie
Summary: Beauty is mystified when she recieves rhymes and riddles before her birthday, and they continue afterwards.  But bad luck is upon her family, and she must eventually submit to the mercy of her Beast. R&R, please.


The sisters all blamed Beauty for their mother's death. They never said it out loud, but she knew it all the same.

The cause was not childbirth fever, as was usual. In fact, the mother claimed to have felt no pain when her youngest daughter was born. It was an interesting case, but the husband thought that she was out of her wits, and sent his physicians to bleed her and his apothecary's experts to prescribe all sorts of medicines. The mother was very stubborn and had a rather high temper, and slapped all physicians and apothecary experts and sent them away.

The usual case was that, in the mother's eyes, the world had shrunken to her newborn and her children. She believed that her child was a beautiful infant, with big, thoughtful eyes that seemed to know you when she looked at you and blondish-brownish hair in slight curls. Temperance, the eldest, thought that she looked rather odd for an infant.

The infant, now christened Beauty, never cried or wailed. She just stared at everything, babbling gibberish as she grew older. She would turn her head when the father came into the room and wave her tiny little fists at his face directly. Once or twice she hit him. The father became angry and slapped the child back. Of course, Beauty began to wail for the first time, but it was halfway between a cry and a whimper.

The mother slapped her spouse back. To strike an innocent infant was a severe crime and meant that you did not want your infant to be born. The mother somehow got her furious spouse out of the room and returned to the baby.

The baby had stopped crying. It looked towards the door, with an evil eye, Beauty's five sisters thought, as if the infant knew consciously of the crime that their father had done to her. An odd thing was that Beauty did not have so much as a scratch from the slap.

When the girl turned into a toddling thing, she began to walk a little, inside the mother's bedroom, falling down but not scratching herself a bit. She had a conscious memory now, and saw this: everything was high and elegant, gold-crusted and shiny. She opened a handled thing, saw a letter, tried to bite on it, for she was teething, but a manicured, graceful hand snatched it out and put it back on the drawer. The graceful hand lifted her up; she saw a great wall of dull red shiny skin that seemed to cover the torso but flared out in gigantic puffs to the ground. She saw a face, such calm, Madonna-like face, perfect in every feature, not one flaw to be seen. The lips opened and out came a sound that made her laugh too.

The girl grew older and had a strange dream one night: her mother was dead, the coffin glossy and black, a terrible monster waited in the darkness that flashed after the coffin. She walked forward, taking ten small steps. She noticed that in this dream, she was much older. Her skirts rustled luxuriously on the floor, the slippers soft and silky. She opened the door that beckoned to her in the darkness, but found that she trapped between the darkness and inside.

She woke up, crying. Her crib had been turned into a small bed now, and her mother's hand patted her hair and two hands now picked her up and patted her back. She found herself in her mother's arms, and then she was walking with her mother down the stairs. Beauty ran, and her mother tried to follow after with her long petticoats.

The stairs wound around in a large spiral, exactly like a corkscrew. The stairs were quite narrow, and though the mother was agile, she tripped and fell several tens of feet down. Beauty looked from the staircase-railing but saw blackness. She went back to her own bed and tried to sleep, tossing her coverlet off.

When she awoke, she remembered last night. She burst into tears, remembering the crime that she had done by running down a steep staircase. The nurse heard her, but she flew out of the nurse's grasp and pounded on her father's door, crying, "Papa! Mother's dead!"

Everyone heard and gasped. Some maids began to cry for the loss of a most beloved mistress that always never scolded when they were first new to some task, or, even when they were quite experienced, she never threatened to fire them when they had a hard, weary day, being shouted at by the cook, the father, Temperance (who did it quite often) and had to tend ill Hope. Beauty ran back into her room and shut the door, and refused to come out even for nourishment. She wept for a long time, locked the door, and pounded the headboard with her small fists angrily. "I caused it, I know I did," she thought. "I shouldn't have." A sense of guilt and remorse took over her.

When the funeral came, her black dress of bombazine was cut close and tight. The lace was black; her hair ribbon was black, the sky was black, the house was temporarily black. All the sisters looked at Beauty, who looked sunken in and hollow. None took pity on her except Chastity, who was kinder than the others. Beauty looked a dreadful sight indeed. Her eyes were void of enjoyment and happiness, and where her face had once shone with laughter, was now shadowed and skeleton-like. Her face made the whole town more funereal.

She continued wearing black until the governess that came at age seven insisted that a child ought to be happy and made her change out of her mourning weeds. It was long past the time to discard them.

When Beauty had time, she ran outside to breathe in the good, flower-scented air. She put in twigs in the dirt, watched them grow, and, defying all probability, sprouted into plants. Her sisters' hated gardening, but she was the only one.

Her guilt and remorse disappeared as her age progressed. She was a smart and intelligent child, though she was not too willing to learn anything that she did not like. She liked most things, though, so it proved to be not a large trouble. Girls aged sixteen and eighteen petted her, while women aged thirty to fifty talked incessantly about the small girl's accomplishments.

As for her sisters, they were not petted so much, but they had things that drew the women and girl's attentions. Temperance had a pet dragon that roared and spat out flames. Virtue was an excellent seamstress and could embroider in her sleep. Mercy was clean and desirably beautiful. Hope had a fragile, calm beauty that matched her temperament. Chastity could sing like a lark, covering from baritone for men to high soprano for women. Her voice was especially prized for at parties and balls, where her friends all liked to hear her sing selections from operas.

Beauty's wit and looks and the ability to draw things were her strengths. She did not think much about them. Compared to Temperance, she was rather dull and dreary. She was clean enough, but not desirably beautiful. She could not sew a straight seam. She could sing high soprano to alto, but not deep notes. All in all, she felt mediocre and bland compared to her sisters' accomplishments. One more thing that she excelled, but was not a virtue, was that her plants grew, no matter what the weather, whenever the weather, even if a random blizzard should happen to strike town.

The dragon drew more attention to Temperance as she grew older. Dragons were rare; her mother had had a dragon but it had died. The dragon spat fire, and, as Beauty grew older, interrupted her schedule of gardening. Near her seventeenth birthday, the dragon proved to be very bad luck.

Often, the dragon had to be pulled back into its cage. It escaped often, but never on anyone's birthday. This time, it was just before Beauty's birthday. She had forgotten some kind of saying: "If a dragon escapes, your good luck's too late," which had proved all too true to past owners of dragons (King Arthur, etc.) and her family.

Beauty was just tending the gardens that she had made when she was still a mourning, funeral-clad child.

A dragon roared somewhere inside the mansion along with a cautious maid's shriek. Then, a clang and clatter and many people—girls, boys, men, women, servants, under-servants alike—were all shouting.

"Beauty, will you come here, please? A certain someone's dragon has gotten out of his cage—again."

A girl named Beauty raised her head up from her flowers. "Stop calling me Beauty, Mercy! Next time, please don't call me if anyone, I repeat, anyone, needs help pulling a dragon in! I've bailed you enough times already."

No one answered, but noise and ferocious roaring could be heard from all sides of the house. The girl didn't mind. It was normal, but soon after the roaring, she would have to help tug the dragon back into the cage, so she hurried up the process of watering as fast as she could.

She resumed tending to her flowers.

Beauty's flowers were the prized things of her possessions, her treasure. She went into the garden every day to tend to them, and the flowers grew quite well under her loving hand. Love will be the best way to grow a flower; magic next, and charms last. Magic only helped encourage the plants to grow, by stopping storms and putting a halt to drought, but no one could say for certain that they would grow. Charms were hocus-pocus stuff, assigned by the witches who were evil and tricky, and charms were accepted by only the most gullible, stupid, idiotic people.

Flowers dotted her sisters' gardens; only her garden was so full of flowers that weeds could not have the smallest chance to grow, but Beauty had tended her sisters' gardens to perfection. Virtue, Hope, Mercy, Chastity, and Temperance had very little time (so they claimed) to tend the flowers and the flowers were neglected, so she, being the only sister that cared about plants, gave them water where they were needed, weeded out the weeds to give the good and deserving plants more room, bought manure from Farmer Jenkins and tended the plants that way, and did many other numbers of things.

This will not do, I should help them, she decided, and got up slowly. Four hours of staying in a crouching position ("How improper she is!" Temperance had cried) had bent her spine in a crooked way forward. With each slow, semi-stiff and semi-fluid motion, her spine made a crick-crack sound. Finally, she stood up, with her skirts still in her hands, she realized, and let go of her hands, straightening the layers of skirts that had been all crumpled up in the crouching position and in an attempt to keep the skirts away from the soil and mud.

Her neck cricked-cricked as she straightened that also and she smoothed her hair away from her ears and nape of her neck. Her hair stuck to her skin because of a filmy layer of sweat all over her body.

"I might as well get moving before my back stiffens into an unnatural position and help get the dragon back into the cage," she thought. "The sooner the better."

She stood there, panting a little, just gazing at her flowers and herbs in which she'd put so much effort in to straighten them out and weed and water them. "Well, I hope they'll be happy," she sighed, and made her way through the stone-mosaic path back to the mansion. "Lord knows what a temper Temperance has got. It's a misnomer, being called Temperance when you have a surly temper. And why does that damn dragon keep escaping from its cage?" She trudged as slowly as she could to delay the point where she would have to help all her sisters and the despairing household people pull the dragon back into the cage. Even though her mind wanted to move quickly, her body told her to slow down and delay everything.

Her slippers slipped in through the big and wide cracks in the stone mosaic. "God, what a nuisance these slippers are," she growled, as much as she could, for she was mostly quite gentle with whatever she did, with the exception of weeding out weeds where weeds could grow in her beloved garden(s), tugging dragons, and the occasional flare of temper which five other sisters, an ignorant father, and quarreling with the household servants could bring.

By the time she reached the door, her toes were sore and nipped from the cracks of the stones.

She opened the door and a blast of cold air hit her face and body. Beauty shivered a little, her gown and apron not being good for much but gardening, though they were made of fairly stiff material, such as canvas, that would take dirt easily and not stain and tear each time her leg and arms hit a bundle of thorns coming from the lemon-bush or the rosebush—to be more precise, several rosebushes. Staining and tearing were nuisances, as well as slippers that kept getting caught in wide cracks and dragons that kept escaping out of their cages.

"Beauty, there you are," Chastity breathed, pulling her youngest sister along this carpeted corridor and then that painting-covered hallway. "The dragon's ferocious. We need you to help."

"Even Temperance?" she asked dubiously.

"Even Temperance," Chastity replied. Temperance was strong and as fiery as her temper, so Temperance needing help was a funny thing, though a dragon set loose upon the whole household could scarcely be called funny.

Flames of orange, blue, and yellow, white, red could be seen. The heat was nearly past bearing point where one felt one's eyes dry up and arms scorch with burning heat, and one could see the Butler, Scullery-Maid, and Steward bending under the direction of the flames, lying down if necessary. Temperance, Mercy, Hope, and Virtue tugged on the leash of the dragon, but Father was somewhere else, in his office, maybe. The four sisters tugging on the leash motioned with their eyes to come and help, for they mustn't have the dragon break loose and terrorize the rest of the household, as well as having the possibility of burning down the whole house. "Help," Mercy yelped.

Beauty ran as fast as she could with her sore toes and got behind Virtue and tugged. Chastity followed, going behind Beauty. "Heave!" Beauty said.

Everyone pulled, but in vain; the dragon seemed to resist everything. "Well, Butler, Scullery-Maid, Steward, Under-Maids, Ms. Baxter, what are you standing there, being useless?" she commanded in a brisk, sharp voice, "come and help us, or else you shall have nowhere to live!"

They all came. Fire flamed from the dragon's mouth, hot, acrid, and dry. The cage stood to the side of the dragon, a cage that would not let fire get through, courtesy of the gentleman-sorcerer in town. Beauty's hands burned as she tugged at the leash with all her strength. Somehow, they managed to drag the dragon sideways into his cage, and Scullery-Maid, Steward, Under-Maids managed to shut the cage door shut. The Butler locked the cage up.

She collapsed onto the floor, as well as Temperance, Mercy, Hope, Virtue, and Chastity. The carpet felt so cool compared to the dragon's fire. It was like living in an oven to be suddenly dipped into cool, refreshing water. "Remind me again why we keep a dragon—a nuisance, mind you—that's fire-breathing and the size of a small cottage."

"This is all Temperance's fault," Virtue accused. "She was the one who wanted a pet dragon, after our mother."

"What? That, you idiot, was not my fault! It's Father's fault; he didn't check whether the dragon could breathe flame or not!" Temperance roared. "As for Mother, it's not as if you can remember her, anyways, so who cares if she owned a dragon? At least the shop gave her a decent one that didn't breathe fire. I don't recall her dragon escaping out of her cage and threatening to terrorize our household."

At the mention of her mother, Beauty felt a stab of sorrow in her heart. She had never gotten to meet her other parent, for the mother had died at three years of age to her, and she only had a wisp of memory of her mother: it was mostly of sunlight, but a nice, fresh, beautiful face had peered over her crib, smiling, laughing, and cooing at her. Now, she was dead, and Beauty could only rely on Temperance, Virtue, and Chastity, the three eldest sisters, each a year apart, to tell her their experiences of Mother, but all three would not say a word. They were too anguished by the situation; they had been old enough to mourn for their mother consciously, and the only two bits of information they gave out was that "Mother was very beautiful," and something quite strange: "Mother used to be magic before we three were born."

While the sisters were bickering, Beauty managed to sneak out of the room where they kept the dragon and into her bed-chamber. Marmalade Cat—the color of apricot-pineapple (the rarest fruit was pineapple, for you had to travel quite far to get it) marmalade—as she called her adopted kitten, mewed and pounced up onto her bed. "No, bad cat; you know that you can't go on the bed!" she said. "Ms. Baxter spent ages trying to wash the cat hairs off, as well as the Scullery-Maids." Marmalade Cat gave a protesting growl and an "mreow!", and then leapt off the bed.

The room was luxurious and comfortable, though quite plain compared to Hope's room, which was very grand and coruscating with gold and gems everywhere. Beauty's room was of a light blue, with dull blue color on her gold-embroidered canopy and bed and chairs, but the walls were only a couple of shades lighter than sky-blue, and the effect when sun shone down on it, was heaven, so she felt.

She sat down on her pet easy-chair—in fact, the only easy-chair in her room—that was comfortable and deep. As a child, she had asked for a chair in which she could be completely absorbed in a book and not be disturbed. Seeing as her father, a wealthy, very wealthy merchant, took great pains to give his daughters whatever they wanted, at no regard to the cost, she got the chair.

She was somewhat tired and distressed at the dragon and also one thing that troubled her mind before the last five hours: she had stolen into her father's rarely empty (but this time it was empty) office in search for some fresh parchment in order to write a letter to a friend, but she had opened a wrong drawer, and in that drawer was taxes and cheques that were expensive and they demanded that the merchant paid them. There were also papers reporting the news of the Queen Caroline—her mother's name, the Portia Temperance, and many other of his ships, and the news were not pleasant. Queen Caroline had crashed somewhere on an island of Monte Cristo, and the rest were safe so far, but heading for extremely dangerous waters, nearing the Bermuda Triangle. This had been tucked away in the back of her head, though it weighed quite a bit, but now, the problem came to her consciousness.

She sat down in her pet easy-chair and sighed, more half-groan than sigh. Her limbs ached all over; a dull, throbbing ache and one existed in her head too. The best potions from the lady-sorcerer, Ms. Goodheart, who really did have a kind heart, would not help. Potions would only make the potions worse, she felt.

Beauty shook her head to get rid of the thoughts: it was making her head ache more. A dilemma of who would take the title of lady-sorcerer after Ms. Goodheart was unusual, of course, because in history, every lady-sorcerer had a girl they apprenticed to succeed them when they eventually—no matter how long it took—died, but there would be nothing wrong with that. Ms. Goodheart would eventually find a successor.

She fell asleep after ten, fifteen minutes of good hard thinking, and before she knew it, when she reluctantly opened her eyes—she did not want to leave her rose-scented dream—it was twilight, supper was in its middle.

During her awkward supper in the grand dining room, which Beauty disliked, she realized that her head had stopped aching; however, her limbs remained in the same condition.

Father had not come, as was the usual case with dinners; he only came on special occasions, such as Christmas, All Hallow's Eve, Easter, and the occasional balls which all six sisters held and important, well-know guests arrived; he would be forced to associate and make acquaintances with those important, social-climbing opportunities.

Over the supper of a rich roast beef stew with boiled and spiced potatoes, some kind of green nasty stuff, a small amount of champagne, and poppy, pumpkin, and melon seeds fried in butter and sprinkled with salt—the quality of the supper which not many of the sisters noticed, Temperance, Virtue, Chastity, and Mercy fought.

Hope and Beauty hung back. Neither sisters said a word, but they just looked at the other four shouting curses of "Lackwit," "Idiot," "Coward," and some which were too nasty to mention to someone else. The worse ones came from Temperance, whom, if it were not a formal dinner without expensive furnishings and plates and no maids and servants and butlers about, would have seized the opportunity to throw things at the other three, such as the regular china plates, cushions, an ink-well that had been misplaced by Hope, who was forgetful, and it was not improbable that she would have flung the whole soup bowl or cauldron, if it were not too heavy to throw.

The noise was maddening, the type of noise that you had to get used to or go mad to, and Beauty nearly went mad. She suddenly stood up and attempted a couple of protesting "Stop!", but the four simply increased their volume. Finally, she was screaming "You stupid lot! Stop arguing, idiots!—lackwits!—numbskulls!" all at once. She couldn't stand the noise, the constant bickering, the mischievous dragon, the trouble of her secret about her father's business; it was all too much for her today, and she'd had a heated row with a couple of the house-servants and not gotten much sleep last night.

An abrupt, awkward silence stood in place of the maddening noise.

"If you have to argue, at least argue where Hope and I can finish dinner in peace!"

All four sisters hung their heads in shame. She rarely lost her temper, but today was one of the days where they had made her roar. It was a funny thing, to be silenced by the youngest sister instead of the eldest.

"Take you arguing and bickering into the drawing-room or the parlor; I don't care—please," she said in a strained voice.

They marched out in silence. The screech of scraping chairs, cutlery clattering into china plates, and footsteps only made Beauty's eyes more piercing.

As soon as the four had left the table, she sighed. Hope was eating, finally. Now that the annoyance of having four sisters quarrel while you're trying to eat dinner was gone, the two girls could eat without distractions.

"Hope, what's the matter?" she asked tenderly. She didn't really mean it, though. Hope was easily disturbed and anguished, and that was annoying for Beauty, who was a kind person but hated having to consolidate people that were easily disturbed, which meant having to consolidate many times. "I really wish I had a stronger sister," she thought. "I don't want to listen to anybody's stupid troubles; it's frustrating when my nature isn't what my mind wants to be."

"I don't know," Hope sniffled. A tear leaked out and dripped off the bridge of her nose. Another tear, another tear, and quite soon came a flood of them but she didn't make a sound. "I think that Temperance made me…ill for the last three hours, that's all. We were bickering—hic—about Mother, and whether—hic—she had been magic or not. Temperance looked terrible—hic—like she was about to explode," she hiccupped and cried at the same time.

"I think that's quite enough. You ought to go to bed. Follow my advice," she interrupted. She was mystified and intrigued at the idea of her mother being magic. Well, Temperance would be the best source, but she would have to be coaxed and goaded and pleaded and begged at to release any information of their mother. She stuffed the last of the beef into her mouth, saved about forty seeds in her pocket to chew on later, when she read, and ran out of the darkening room; it had many windows, and the sky was turning the purplish-navy-blue color of nighttime.

When she passed by Temperance's and Virtue's room, she overheard Temperance quieting down and saying feelingly, "You know, I don't mean to roar and throw myself into a passion. It's just my nature. We made Beauty lose her temper today."

"You know how rare it is that Beauty loses her temper, and she normally just speaks at us to quiet down. She actually cursed and shouted at us. I feel that I owe an apology to her," Virtue agreed.

"I do, too, dear."

Beauty sped on past their room and came to Chastity and Mercy's room. "You know," Chastity was saying, "Mother was nice. She was beautiful. And you know about Mother losing her powers on magic, right? Are you skeptical, maybe doubtful about that?"

"My mother used magic," Beauty thought. Her consciousness and awareness seemed to be unable to grasp the fact that her mother used magic and her alertness went numb. She was filled with a semi-conscious desire to stay and listen.

"Yes, of course I'm doubtful about that! It seems impossible." Mercy clanged something; it sounded like glass, so perhaps it was perfume bottles and lotions and creams.

"Well, I've never seen Mother using magic. There's lots of opportunities she could have used magic for, such as this: I saw her with two hundred people, with two hundred and one place settings, with streamers and balloons and food she had to prepare for, and she never used magic. Two hundred people are enough to make you go mad if you have two hundred and one place settings to set, and if she had to set up our ballroom with so many pretty things, she could have used magic to solve those problems. I think she nearly went mad, though, doing those by hand."

At any information of her mother, she would stop and listen attentively; it was a habit to do that, for she was the only one who could not remember their mother clearly enough to distinguish features and voice and laughter. Beauty stood as if though her feet were lead and pressed her ear against the elegantly-designed-to-muffle-footsteps hall's side wall, which didn't make sense, since if robbers got in, and that was not improbable, it would be hard to track them in which part of the house if they got in. And should murderers come?

Chastity started sniffling, but she rarely got to the point of breaking down and crying, such was the temperament for five sisters: Beauty, Chastity, Mercy, Virtue, Temperance, and Chastity did not do so. Hope was the always ill and delicate one, to the point that Beauty was jealous of her for getting so much of her father's attention: it was Hope he called in for, it was Hope he sent his best physicians and apothecaries for, and it was Hope everything!

Beauty got over her short burst of jealousy, pushing it back into her breast and out of her mind and prepared to listen to more conversation concerning her mother and Ms. Goodheart.

"Mother was very, very pretty," Chastity sighed. "I don't remember too much, but I remember how she looked and smelled. She smelled like…well, like one of those flowers out in the back garden, and I think it grows in Beauty's garden only. She's done loads for us, tending our gardens and trying not to lose her temper when all four of us fight."

She felt a tiny sliver of pride in her heart. She stayed to listen in a place where, should the door open, it would not hit her on the head and, perhaps, if the door were pushed in a temper, knock her unconscious, though that was highly unlikely to happen. She had to stifle a giggle, imagining what would happen should she be knocked unconscious by the door.

Chastity went on: "Mother was pretty, of course. I think she had gold hair, but it had some chestnut shades and reddish shades and a streak of orange here and there and there were places where it was nearly white, and it looked unnatural, but it was so natural, it was a miracle of God. And the best eyes, all sparkly and they were shades of blue, green, and gray, but occasionally black or deep brown if the lighting wasn't good. She had a kind of wild look about her. I think Temperance inherited that look. Mother also had…a kind of tender, calm, and gentle expression, one that would soothe you if you were ill or if you were hurt. She looked beautifully wild and gentle—in fact, she looked both at the same time. I think Beauty looks gentle mostly, but when her temper flares up, she looks exactly like Mother—her face is already so like it, and when she goes into a passion, I can swear that Mother is looking out of Beauty's face."

She felt her heart swell up with pride at the mention that she looked like her mother. Beauty crept on past until she reached her bedroom. She was about to walk in and slam the door safely shut when something silky and furry wound itself around her skirts. "Marmalade Cat," she murmured. "You're welcome to come in. You came just at the right time, kitty, or else I would have shut you out. After you."

The cat half walked, half slithered its way into the room, and then her owner followed and shut the door.

"What do you think they meant about Mother being magic?" she asked the Marmalade Cat. Marmalade Cat gave a little purr, wound its way around her owner again and laid her head in her lap. Beauty was sitting like a Turk, cross-legged, very comfortable for reading, and the cat had just put its head into the middle of her book, Paradise Lost. "Oh, Marmalade, please take your head off my good, leather-bound book for one moment before you rub your hairs all over my books, and I need to get my towel so that your hairs don't make it impossible to wash my dress, please, kitty?" she coaxed.

The cat got off the book reluctantly and dug in its claws into the bed. The towel was placed over her owner's lap and Beauty patted the towel to encourage Marmalade Cat to come back to her lap. "There you go, kitty," as the cat put its head onto her lap and she rubbed the cat's skull with her fingers between the two large ears. Marmalade Cat meowed, leapt off the bed, opened the door, and hurried out of the room, leaving Beauty to sit there and think.

"I do wonder how we will survive if we lose money because Father has neglected to pay the taxes," she thought, with a sinking heart. "If I should be married before Father comes to ruin and be settled safely, there should be no problem at all. I have never loved someone, so it should be no problem to marry someone. But I want to marry for love, not money. Oh, why did he have to be careless on money," she cried in her head.

Some other part of her reminded this: "Poverty is not as bad as one imagines to be. Once the worst is over, everything shall fall in place. If you do marry, make sure you love the man truly; else you should be unhappy in your married life. Once you are married, it cannot change."

_Once you are married, things cannot change_ whirled in her head long after she thought those thoughts. It was like trying to drive a frightening image out of her head to find that she could not. She tossed and turned all night; she stayed up watching the darkness, every nerve over-sensitive, and every muscle taut.

Thoughts are worse than frightening images. In time, with frightening images, you will be able to say to yourself, "There, there, it is only a frightening image and there is no need to be afraid of it, for it does not exist in reality." Thoughts will stick to you and never let go. You will not be able to get it out of your head.

As she stared into the darkness, she suddenly heard a sound: her door was opening. A figure with glowing yellow-green eyes crept in, meowed, and jumped on the bed.

"Marmalade," she whispered.

The cat walked to her, curled up, with her tail on Beauty's nose as she walked in a circle, and lay down with her head beside her owner's face. The warm breath comforted Beauty.

"If I won't marry, I'll accept poverty, then. It has to be better than having no affection for someone," she resolved, then fell asleep.

She had a very strange dream then. She was walking down a corridor full of half-shadowed paintings. It was very dark and drafty; she shivered, though she was clothed, but she could not see what she was wearing. The only light came from a candle and it scarcely penetrated the darkness. The candle flickered dangerously, but a particularly windy draft snuffed the candle out. She felt her way around in the darkness; there was a door with engraving on it. She opened the door and caught a glimpse of what was inside. Just before she woke up, she had an image of something terrible and shadowed and something that made her spine run with chills. There was also a parchment roll by her paper; she picked it up and read:

"_From love's enduring power you shall find_

_An ally proving neither wicked nor kind. _

_Affection shall grow, love you shall find_

_And the secret also, within your own kind." _

"Kind and find keep repeating in this poem," she said.

She woke up with sunlight streaming down from the large windows and Marmalade Cat jumped down to the floor from the sudden movement and hissed.

"What a dream," she said. Her voice sounded very strange and alien. "I think I need to speak more to cure this feeling of strangeness.

"That rhyme in there is a riddle, I think. 'From love's something power you shall find an ally proving neither wicked nor kind. Something shall grow, love you shall find and the secret also, within your own kind,'" she recited as best as she could from memory. "How odd that is, isn't it, Marmalade?" she asked. The response was a meow—the cat was talkative—and a short purr that filled up the whole room.

She got up and brushed the tangled hair out of her mouth. She took a long time to chose what dress to put on; she could never make many certain decisions, in fear that it would go wrong and she would feel that she ought to have chosen something else. In twenty minutes, she had chosen a pair of ice-blue diamond earbobs, a lilac-bluish colored dress with big bell sleeves that billowed out and then tapered at the very end to fitted cuffs, and good stout black leather slippers that wouldn't tear up immediately if she went to garden.

She hated putting her hair up. Her hair, she felt, was another mark against her mother's supposedly good charms and looks. It was mousy brown, neither blonde nor a deep, rich chestnut brown, which the rest of her sisters had with the exception of Virtue, who was a raven-haired beauty. Her hair was coiffed up quickly to stop staring at the offending color and she opened a drawer to get a diamond-and-jewel-encrusted comb. But there was a piece of parchment not there before, and she took both comb and paper out of the drawer. She stuck the comb in her chignon and opened the parchment. There fell out on her vanity table a necklace, glittering gold, and another sheet of parchment, smaller than the first one.

"My dear child Beauty," it began, "this is my deathbed you are sleeping in. If you should discover this, know that it is your mother cannot say anything more about this, I am afraid. Dear, happy birthday I wish you, and know that your mother loves you very, very much. I am ill and shall waste away in my coffin, unless someone should place a spell to preserve me from corruption, and that will take too much power for anyone in town to do that.

I love you, my dear child, too much. I do not know when you shall get this letter, but when you do, it is truly from me.

"Love,

Your Mother, also Caroline Aurelia Carson."

"P.S., I leave a small picture of me on a gold-chained necklace. Claim it as yours and no one else's."

Beauty sat there in shock, her heart beating wildly. "Could this really have come from my mother? Is she really my mother?" she wondered. "Or is it an elaborate hoax?"

She put the necklace on, but before she did, she looked at the picture. The picture was perfect, flawless. A small, delicate painting of a woman was inside the gold rose border of the necklace. The woman had a gentle yet fiery look about her that suggested she was half-wild and half tame. The face was delicate, a kind of beauty that was neither fiery like Temperance's or gentle, like Hope's. It was in between, and the fieriness and gentleness seemed to be bound by magic; you could not separate either one. The hair was a strange gold color, exactly like Chastity described, but seeing it on picture made it all the more enchanting.

Her mind shifted to more sensible things. "Why would Mother say that she does not have anything to do with magic so strangely? It makes it obvious that she does have something to do with magic. The parchment in my dream did say about love's enduring power. This is a tangle," she thought. There seemed to be something about the magic that suggested something deep and mysterious and threatened to make one go mad if someone tried to comprehend it.

She opened the smaller sheet of parchment.

"Magic and love are inseparably entwined,

Upon opening the letter you shall find:

A secret that finds itself unto you,

And someone that will love you true.

The lover, though you know him not,

He shall not be forgot.

His destiny is entwined in yours,

Should you find him, open the door.

The door shall open at the close.

Find a single, wilted rose.

The truth whether in a curse or spell,

That is alone for you to tell."

The door suddenly opened and she hastily stuffed the smaller piece of parchment into the bodice of her gown. Temperance was there.

"I'm sorry if I disturbed you, Beauty. I just want to apologize for yesterday. I never meant for you to lose your temper," she said quietly. But as soon as she saw Beauty's necklace, she went pale, then red. "Where did you get the necklace?" she whispered.

"From the drawer," she replied truthfully. "This bed that I am sleeping on is Mother's deathbed, isn't it?"

She bit her lip and nodded. "Yes, it is. I didn't want to tell you, dear, but I've had nightmares about Mother's death all the time. I wanted to tell you after the argument yesterday."

"Well, it's my seventeenth birthday, isn't it? I forgot."

"Happy birthday, then, Beauty. Here's your present," Temperance sighed, then handed Beauty a package the size of a very large book. "I hope you enjoy it. I got it for you especially, from the attic."

"The attic?" Beauty opened the rose-colored and printed paper and gasped. "Oh, it's beautiful!" she exclaimed. "Thank you, thank you, Temperance!" Inside laid a white gown with roses embroidered on the hem and on the thin gauzy shawl that came with it. The earbobs were made of metal and were red, red roses. "This was Mother's, wasn't it?"

She just took her hand and let her to the dining room. All four other sisters were waiting there. "We all wish you a happy birthday, and we're all sorry we made you lose your temper."

"Wait—what? No, you needn't do anything—no, that's enough for a birthday present, Temperance. Truly, I'm fine."

"No, you're not," Virtue said, shaking her head. "You're paler than usual, and your temper's shorter than usual. It's not the usual curse of Eve, is it?"

"No, i-it's not," Beauty stammered. "Well, I don't need anything more for my birthday—just to see that you aren't fighting anymore and…"

All four other sisters, Mercy, Chastity, Hope and Virtue gave her presents, each differing in size. From Mercy was a small piece of embroidery that was bordered in lace, the picture embroidered being roses; from Chastity came an expensive, leather-bound book that said Virgil's Aeneid; from Hope was an exquisite hand-crafted bracelet from Hope herself; lastly, from Virtue, came a hand-stitched dress. The dress was made of durable calico, but the print was of roses and the background was pure white. The stitching was nearly invisible, and there were puffed sleeves at the shoulders and tucks at the waist, hem, cuffs, and there was extra fabric on the inside of the same material so that when she grew, the dress could be altered to fit.

All this overwhelmed her. She smiled and found that she couldn't say a word. When she found her voice, all she could say was "Oh, my Lord. Thank you."

The rest of the day passed like a happy dream to her, and when she went to her father's study to ask for some parchment paper, her father gave her lovely cream-colored thick parchment of the best quality.

When she laid down her dizzy, whirling head to bed that night, she immediately fell asleep. For a short while, there was only darkness, but soon, her dream began to flicker to life. She was on the rooftop of a high place, and looking down made her dizzy. The cold night air whipped at her hair and face; her cheeks stung. The rooftop was of gold and it gleamed and coruscated in the moonlight. There was a forest that stretched for about five miles and then she saw a cottage, a small cottage with roses that could be barely seen in the moonlight. All of the sudden, she was inside the cottage, and everything creaked and groaned. The shafts of moonlight through the uncommonly high windows of the cottage were comforting. There was a trunk inside the empty cottage, and she bent down and opened the trunk with a snick. The trunk had nothing in it but paper and the paper held yet another poem:

"Upon the finding this sheet,

You have news of a certain fleet.

But beware of the trickery yet,

For your life will be of a bet."

"What bet?" she wondered as she held the poem. "What trickery? And shall I find another clue like today tomorrow?"

She was suddenly dragged out of the cottage and the forest seemed to bifurcate behind her and she found herself facing forward and not backwards. She was back at the place with the high gold rooftop.

Some sense of fear made its way to her and she shivered. The door opened and she looked at the inside. The darkness swallowed her up.

She suddenly sat up in darkness and felt around blindly for some evidence that she was not in a waking nightmare. There were the bed-curtains and she felt Marmalade Cat. The sky was a promising gray of the new day. It was light enough to see her hands and hair and the cat. She got out of bed, pulling her nightdress hem down and walked to the windowsill. She put her fingers to the skin under her eyes. They were slightly saggy. Oh, how tired she felt! The dream had seemed to sap all of her conscious energy from her. She put her head on the ice-cold window-pane and felt the coldness grow as she watched the skies. No sun came up.

She had changed to the calico gown when someone knocked on the door. Hope wrung her hands and bit her lip. "Bad news, Beauty," she whimpered. "Father's sunk into debt. And Temperance was to be married, too! So were Chastity and Virtue!"

"Oh," was all that she could say. She sank down into her pet easy-chair and put her head into her hands. "I knew this would happen! I think yesterday must have been something like a dream to try to soften the blow. Well, it didn't." She was in a state of shock and felt herself getting hot at the embarrassment of…well, something that she could not mention and then she turned clammy, thinking about poverty, hard work, and trying to make ends meet.

The tearing in her heart gave way to rage. "It should have happened yesterday! It would have made it all the better, instead of having one good day and the next, destruction! Oh, that was incredibly stupid of me to believe that everything was fine! Incredibly stupid!"

"Well, it's not my fault," Hope sniffled. "Vent your rage on Father, not me."

Beauty stormed down the hall and burst into her father's study. "Why did you not tell me? Why? It would have made yesterday much better!" She was too angry to weep.

When she finally saw her father, what she saw made her heart soften a little. He was sunken and wizened. He coughed and seemed in a state of melancholy. "I knew you would find the connexion between the letter and what will happen now. The paper had been shifted, and no one else goes into my room for paper," he replied simply.

"That is not an answer," she hissed. When she ran into the dining room, she could find none of her sisters there. She thought she would find better luck in the parlor. All five sisters except Temperance were weeping. Temperance was holding her cross and praying: "Yea, though I walk in the valley of shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil, for thou with me, thy rod and thy staff comfort me…"

"What are you doing here, weeping uselessly?" Beauty muttered through a small grimace. "Wealth is not everything, you know!"

"How do we live?" Hope wailed. The other three agreed by weeping more.

"Get up, all of you," she shouted, pulling each sister up by the arm. "No more weeping and clinging! We have to be self-sufficient. Temperance, can you cook? Yes—go to the kitchen and cook something with things that would be easy to grow, such as potatoes and herbs grown from a garden. Virtue, you can sew—start preparing simple, tough, durable dresses for all of us to wear. The calico rose-print gown that I have on right now is the simplest I have at the moment. There is simple canvas and calico in the Maids' closets. Fetch them and measure us. The rest of you, try cleaning a part of the house."

Everybody bustled to finish their tasks, while Beauty went to the garden. There were orangeries and glasshouses. She picked twelve oranges and wrapped them up in a tough bag she found. She went to the glasshouses but found nothing there. She went to her own herb garden and picked marjoram, mint, rosemary, thyme, parsley, and sage. She packed them into her pocket-handkerchief and picked some roses to make candied rose petals. She did not know why she did this bustle, but she knew she had to do something to stop thinking about moving to an obscure place on the edge of another town. Her mind was filled with some kind of fog. It felt as if her body were someone else's and not hers.

Marmalade Cat came out of the doors to investigate what her owner was doing. Beauty saw the cat and realized she could not sell Marmalade. The cat was too precious to sell. However, all furniture would have to be sold, and any money that they had went to buying food to make ready their new home, whatever it was. There was sensible furniture to be found somewhere, so furniture was not a problem. Finding enough food to last at least a three-month's journey would be the dilemma.

She felt sad to pick her favorite roses. The roses were her precious treasures and they grew only for her, not anyone else. She made some cuttings, but realized that they would be no use. The cuttings would not survive three months, at the least, until they reached their new destination, wherever that chanced to be.

She started crying for no reason. She was a sensible girl, and did not see much use of crying too much, so she surprised herself by crying, though she didn't know why. Warm tears wet her cheeks and a terrible pain grew in her heart. She did not bother brushing the emotions and tears away. She sobbed silently until the tears passed, and she said shakily to herself, "No crying, only self-sufficiency and independence. Crying belongs to another ridiculous world now."

Beauty came back into the kitchen and found that Temperance could make excellent mashed potatoes with only water, potatoes, and some parsley. There was dried meat from the cook; apparently, he had not taken the meat or any food with him at his resigning. The booty would prove useful when they moved to their new place. She also found out that their only remaining property that had not fallen to ruin was a place called Rose Meadow. The word Rose sickened her to her heart, but they had no choice. It was a strange place and it was approximately two months' journey to there, if the climate and weather was good.

The sisters soon found themselves with another problem. The friends that they'd had when they were wealthy proved to be unfaithful. Beauty was the one who remained unaffected. She was always in her garden and not at balls and socials and other grand events during the last twelve years or so. Her other sister's friends were disgusted at the sudden loss of wealth. Everyone liked their mother, but hated the sisters now, for some strange reason. The sisters were urged to get out of town as soon as possible by the last remaining servants that stayed with them without any salary. Every day, the family faced threats to pack off, go to somewhere obscure, and never be seen again. The girls who had been the five sister's friends said that the friends had cheated them and deserved to rot in gaol. The to-be husbands of the three eldest sisters agreed and more, saying that they ought to be put in the stocks or the pillory for such trickery.

In the last few weeks when they were packing up the house and auctioning their most expensive and precious items, the sisters learned to make a household run by cooking, cleaning, tending to the garden, moving furniture, and other housewifely things. The father held an auction, and he earned 2000 francs, enough just to get a wagon, buy supplies such as candles, spools of threads, needles, lamps, torches, some bolts of good, sturdy cloth, and extra food. They still had two horses that Mercy and Temperance claimed that were too good to sell, so they kept the two horses and tried to make ends meet by finding jobs and earning money to buy more supplies and oats.

At last, in September, they were off to their new (well, not quite so new, for the place had stood there for at least half a century) place. The thoroughbreds Temperance and Mercy owned trotted obediently; they had been well-trained by their owner.

Beauty sat in the wagon, purse-lipped as she read the Bible, Virgil's Aeneid, Ulysses, and The Death of King Arthur, more commonly known as Le Mort d'Arthur.

The journey was tedious, and in a week, all family members found themselves short-tempered, especially dangerous Temperance. She cracked the whip over the poor horses, cursing and shouting at the pitiable creatures when they had managed to get stuck in a hole or in a rut or had trouble crossing a stream.

"D'you have to be so mean to the horses?" Beauty asked. She could not tolerate mistreatment of poor animals. "They are doing their best, after all. I feel sorry for them."

"You're feeling sorry for the creatures that you wanted to sell, you hypocrite!" Temperance lashed.

The father was in a deeper state of melancholy. He was nearly an invalid, and he moaned about something dreadful when the wagon moved and bumped and jolted. Hope, Mercy, and Virtue looked after the father, while Chastity, who was generally a cheerful girl if not roused to anger, tried to cheer the two sisters that were ignoring each other.

Chastity thought that looking after a near-invalid father and two stand-offish sisters and trying to cheer them all up was a hard job.

They all had rather bad luck for the next one and a half months, getting stuck in ruts, rivers, snow, hail, and a bad infestation of mosquitoes, which left them itchy and sick for two weeks, delaying their journey.

When they arrived at last, their food was rationed to very little a day, to spare as much for their invalid father, and they had trouble finding the road. There was a spoke-wheel pattern, and they did not know which of the five (they were on one of the paths) paths to take until a traveler and his wife came by and pointed out a road.

The distance to the house made the gloomy weather all the more depressing; they had been hoping that the cottage would be easy to find, but it was not. They kept going and going on the path until even Chastity despaired and thought that it would take an eternity to reach their destination.

It did not take that long, but it took them half a day to find the cottage, and then the cottage was rather small for seven people. For about four people, it would have been comfortable, but not for a group of seven. There were high windows that Beauty noticed first of all. Then she noticed the white roses and the flesh-colored ones and the scarlet, brilliant ones and the mellow pink ones and the vibrant heliotrope the stems glowed against the explosion of colors. She took that to be a nice omen. Then she noticed that there was an attic and that three or four sisters could fit there comfortably and the rest could be in the parlor. There was a storage closet on the first floor, they later found out. Temperance found a nice place for the horses to graze and a privy that was not at all damaged and smelled sweet—as sweet as a privy can ever smell.

They moved into the house as quickly as they could to get used to it. "I don't want to think about Home now; I just—just want to get used to here and forget Home," Temperance admitted as she looked around at the place. There was a stove in a corner, a chair that reminded Beauty of her old one with a pang of sadness, for she had had to auction off her beloved chair. The remaining little furniture they brought would not sit straight on the crooked floors and the legs of the remaining furniture wobbled and some threatened to tip over but never quite did.

There was another good sign: a stained glass window. The light shone on colored brilliantly. The design, etched out by slender, graceful rivulets of lead, was a beautiful young maiden with a scarlet rose growing right out of her heart and into her clasped hands. It made the house more beautiful and homey. "I shall never forget this," Beauty sighed and touched the glass rose with earnest fingertips, as if the glass were a real rose and the rose-petals were silky, but once she felt that it was glass and not roses, she hastily drew back her fingertips and clutched at them with her right hand. She did so want some roses!

All six sisters bustled to fixing the house: Virtue sewed up curtains on the first day to stop the windows from feeling like eyes which could see into the whole household, Temperance tried to build a temporary stable out of the lumber she found at the back of the house but ended up having the others, including Virtue, to help lift the wood and hammer. Beauty hammered and sawed straight, while Hope had a knack for finding lost hammers and nails discarded in the grass. Mercy cleaned up the little dusty places with help from Chastity, who sung her usual like-a-lark songs to keep spirits up, for Mercy hated dusting and sweeping and mopping but had no other choice.

The father was left alone to care for himself, but he did not mind. All he wanted was peace from his days in the city and to live a quiet, simple, gay life here. To be sure, it would not be gay at first, he reasoned, but it would soon be. He lounged about all day, moaning about nonsensical things and wandering in the memories of his mind because he was extremely ill and was delirious, until Mercy shrieked when she found him on the floor instead of the chair, unconscious.

The place turned out to be rather cozy, if not crowded. They never missed company because all six were here. The three eldest sisters got the privilege of sleeping downstairs, while the three younger slept in the attic. Virtue made a warm blanket for the three sleeping upstairs, because the wind struck there hardest and leaked in through the small, small cracks in the thatch roof, as well as rain and snow. During their winter, which struck a week after the arrival of them, it kept raining and snowing and getting harsh winds alternating. Beauty kept getting soaked by raindrops that fell while she slept, and awakened to find her hair damp and the blanket as well.

Virtue grew restless. She found that, if she could not look at pretty scenery from the window, she might as well be dead. She grew in a bad temper and affected Chastity's songs, Temperance's willingness to work, Beauty's already somewhat dampened mood from not being able to see the flowers—that was the only reason; besides that, there was no reason for winters to be dark and dreary. Mercy's way of dusting turned violent.

"Good heavens, how long does this rain last?" Virtue whined, about two months after their arrival. She was sewing but her seams and stitches had turned out crooked and she'd had to rip them all out and start over a second time, and when she saw that they were crooked again, she started on a third time. Perhaps it was partially because she used the candles the most and they were going down to their last thirty candles, the candle she was currently using was dimmed because of the lack of light outside, perhaps not. "It never rained this much when we lived in the city." When she looked outside, she only saw drizzly rain, a gray-whitish sky, and purplish-gray thunderstorm clouds that threatened to send a whole downpour.

"You know, the local sorcerer probably kept most of the thunder-clouds away to stop dampening parties and balls," Beauty remarked, thoughtfully. She was sitting by the window on a wide and stout ledge, alternating between putting her hands on the cold windowpane, watching the raindrops slant diagonally towards the bottom of the window, and putting her whole face and head to be chilled by the cold. "I suppose there's only a lady-sorcerer here, and that cannot help too much."

"I hate the rain."

"I hate you whining," Temperance put in, making—and violently beating—some kind of lumpen dish. "At least Beauty whines the least."

"I do not whine! And besides, don't you get melancholy from the rain?"

"No, I never do," Beauty answered, though it was really not her business. "The rain is cheerful and it shouldn't be a danger to the flowers if it doesn't flood. I really hope it doesn't flood. The rain's my friend; I like the cool touch of rain on my sleeve." She put both palms on the window, as if she were emphasizing the fact.

"Oi, Beauty, I'll have to do that again," Mercy grumbled, who was cleaning all the windowpanes and had just finished the one Beauty put her hands and face on.

"Next time, don't answer when it isn't your business, will you?" Virtue snapped. "If you like to get soaked, go out there and ruin my beautiful rose-printed calico, then!"

She thought that she had better change out of the rose-printed calico and go outside to prevent a bad fight. There would be no one to visit for a whole mile or so, so it would be very useless to make enemies of one another. She went up to the attic to change, but found that her blue snuff gown was soaked, so she sighed and made do with the rose calico and a straw raincoat that she made herself. Her boots were tough and rough, made to last rain, snow, weather of any kind, so it would be no problem forever.

She opened the door but forgot to shut it. The door slammed shut when she looked back two seconds later. She sighed and brushed the water off her eyelids.

The roses didn't sparkle; they hadn't sparkled for a long time since the storms started. Sunlight only lasted a few minutes but it soon rained and drizzled, and, occasionally, poured. The stems were bending from the weight of the rain, the petals drooping brown and falling to the ground, the leaves bending in awkward positions. The bushes were faring a little better, but they were not pretty.

There were roses smack in the center of the garden, while there was a plot of another, probably vegetable, garden to the left when she walked out the door as she did now, towards the right side of the house when she walked straight back to the house on the long path, though she rarely did so. There were bushes in front of the roses and vegetables, ugly but durable. These were all to the left when she walked out the front door.

On the right, there were herbs growing to the farthest right of the house (left if she were coming back home) but there was simply empty ground between the path and the herb garden. All in all, it was a practical, no-fuss-and-nonsense garden except for the roses.

Beauty heaved another great sigh. Her soul had been exhilarated by the rain when it first came, but two months—and Christmas had already passed—of nonstop, pouring, dreadfully dull rain dampened her soul and made her feel empty inside. She still liked the rain, but it no longer excited her soul anymore. Rain sparkled on her eyelashes, but they did not glimmer bright rainbows, simply because there was no sunlight to refract the water.

She put her fingers gently on the rose petals that were still left on the flower; there weren't many left, so she kissed the petals with a brush of the lip. "Grow, please, grow," she begged, because she simply had to. The roses had looked bright on the last weeks of November, but now they seemed as if a gray curtain had dropt over the whole scene.

She turned to the poor vegetables, beaten down by the drizzle. She pulled the few carrots out and the potatoes and turnips that had been planted by whoever lived there before. As she dug, she chanced to look at her hands and saw only dirt and grimy fingernails and roughened palms. When she was in the city, she had seen hands that were graceful, clean, and full of a bright future that a city could give.

She stood up, not minding that the hem was slightly muddy and bogged down with water, and cupped her hands to catch the rain. She was not quite herself, she subconsciously knew, but she enjoyed this feeling of not being her own human self. Her imagination began to work to bring her out of this world, so that she saw cheerful, joyful things. Perhaps a force of magic worked to help Beauty. She saw the recollection of her mother, the scented roses in her own garden in the city, the serene joy she had when she read a good, thoughtful book, her own father well and quite safe in his mind, the times when the sisters had not been arguing and instead had been sitting in the parlor basking like cats in the sunlight.

"Come on in," Mercy called from the window. "You've been standing like that for a good half hour."

Beauty collected her wits and recollections and went back inside the house.

The light from the windows made the house seem gloomy as well. As soon as she had finished supper, she sat there in her pet window-ledge, doing the same thing before she had gone outside to the garden for three hours, so the clock (a remnant of the city house) said.

She was chilled all over but thoroughly enjoyed the feeling, though Virtue complained about having to wash the rose-print calico yet the fifth time that week. The heat from her body radiated through her soaked, soppy clothing. She found herself drifting off to sleep, but woke up just in the nick of time to hear that Virtue was whining about the blue snuff dress. It was so wet; it would take more than a night to dry. Beauty groaned inwardly. Temporarily, having a wet-hemmed dress was fun, but if she had to wear it the next day damp, she would have to go about the house wearing her corset (though there was no use of it anymore), petticoats, and in the ratty old thing she called her dressing-gown.

She did not remember what she did before she went to bed. She remembered only that she crawled into bed, weary, in a bad state of mind, tossing and turning for at least an hour. The dreams took a little while to get in her head, and then they startled her.

It was about something terrible. She could see blood, swords clashing, roses blooming so quickly it was in full burst in two seconds, a horrible face—whether it was real or not, she could not distinguish, only that it whirled around her head. She was frightened; she did not know where she stood, but it was all whirling around her, the horrible face everywhere. She was scared by the face, not the blood and the eerie way the roses grew. The roses were almost frightening, but did not quite fit the description. She was calm, though startled. The face loomed closer until she felt quite frozen with fear, thinking, "I shan't look, I shan't look at the face—it is too terrible. What's terrible, I don't know. I just don't know!"

She woke up, thrashing around the bedcovers until she poked her face out and could breathe, and then the breathing was fast and shallow, as if she'd run a long distance. "Why am I scared?" she asked herself. "I am perfectly safe here, perfectly safe. Beauty, collect yourself!" Despite her self-scolding, her spine prickled with tension and anxiety.

Mercy groaned. "Why are you awake at this time of the night? Or is it nearly morning and you have come to wake me this way?"

"No; I have had a bad dream," she murmured. She did not dare lay her head on her pillow just yet, for the feeling of apprehension and tension had not yet faded, though most of it was gone by Mercy breaking the eerie silence. She sat there, breathing gently, hearing the warm whoosh of her breath against the darkness that pressed down on her very eyelids.

Mercy fell asleep, but Beauty sat there, awake and fully paranoid, one could say, until the gray light that dampened everything shone through the windows and Mercy and Hope yawned. The light was welcome, offending color that it was.

The day proved to be more dismal and dank than the last, if such were possible. It was a good deal more cheery, though, for Temperance had stopped growling and Virtue stopped whining. There was a problem, though. There was a food shortage. Having to feed seven people during a one-and-a-half-months' journey depleted their supply severely. But Temperance worked magic and made three potatoes, two turnips, and a few herbs into a dinner for six healthy girls and one ill father.

Everyone but Beauty was busy, so she helped each of her sisters for a while, but found that she could not sew straight hems, wash the floor without falling down from the slipperiness of a lot of rainwater, bake without burning the top of a loaf of bread, and did not want to help her father, who had brought their ruin about.

She wandered around the house, pale and in a sallow complexion, looking in corners and niches and crannies. She looked like a ghost in the old, sad ballads that mourned for the loss of a bonny one. She felt that her heart was hollow as it had not been for a long time. It reminded her of the time when her mother died. That was the time when her heart was empty but her eyes were overflowing with unshed tears.

She found something sticking out of a corner of the parlor. It was a scrap of paper, ripped off at the bottom as well as the top. It read:

"_Upon you next destination you will find_

_That fate will be unusually kind. _

_If you know where Truth lies,_

_Look up to the starry skies. _

"Another mysterious poem," she thought, rather sick and yet fascinated of the idea. "I do wonder if they mean something…"

She took out the poem from her bodice and took a look at both poems. The larger sheet was ripped off at the bottom. She took the poems together and found that they matched.

There was something terribly dreadful and awful about those two sheets of parchment, but exactly what, she could not figure out. She decided to not tell anybody, for it would be sure to cause alarm. Alarm was the one thing she did not wish to cause.

She tucked both back into her bodice hastily when she heard Mercy calling out for her sisters to help get something. Mercy was rather short for her age, so she relied on Beauty or the rest to help dust the high shelves.

The rest of the year passed, rainy, dreary, and dull. The roses did not bloom. They were flooded instead, and Beauty mourned for the loss of those beautiful, lovely flowers. Neither did the herbs and the harvest of vegetables in that winter was scanty. The roses refused to grow in such terrible conditions; the herbs and vegetables, being more endurable, grew a bit, scarcely enough to be called a small harvest.

As for the dilemma of victuals, the family literally starved for the year, for lack of activity and food. Temperance was growing ever more fastidious with details when she was in a rage, for she had nothing much to do, having conquered the fixing of the privy, the stable, fixing up the house, clearing the chimneys, and other various projects to pass away the time. She could not ride, either, for doing that would mean having to wash herself thoroughly and none of the sisters were willing to go out in the freezing weather to bring back several gallons of water from the dark cold well. Beauty had gotten used to having a gnawing, aching, grumbling sensation in her stomach that told her she needed to eat. They all had gnawing sensations in their stomachs, but tried to save food for their father, who obstinately refused, saying that he was an old man and could not spare any of his daughters starving. He slowly gave in and ate, though.

Toward their second full year there, they had a bit better luck. Many people in that obscure town next to their place had heard of the seven people starving; it was a small town and talk spread rather quickly and they felt pity for seven members of a household, and so came by their house, no matter the distance, and had given them some food to the sisters. An ill person will not need much food, but six healthy girls certainly will. The food was accepted heartily and was fairly devoured by the sisters.

For the first half of the second year, nothing bloomed and nothing grew except for potatoes and rosemary. But, by Providence and perhaps by Divine intervention, the sun shined and the garden slowly, gradually, began to come back to life. The roses and carrots and turnips and beets and all the rest had certainly had enough water. Now, since sunshine shone kindly upon them, they began to sprout in earnest. Beauty's soul began to rise out of its accustomed darkness as she saw the flowers and other plants sprout green, lush leaves and that the sepals held a small burst of color between them. It would mean that they would store however much needed in the cellar and whatever surplus that they had left could be used at the town's farmer's market.

The summer was warm, and the plants were so eager to greet the sunshine they sprang out a new coil or a new burst of color every hour or so, and soon, in about a month and a half's time, the garden was fairly drenched in vivid hues of red, heliotrope, ochre, fuchsia, saffron, viridian, practically every color one could be able to imagine.

"My, my," Beauty sighed, looking at her flowers from the large windows. "I can scarcely believe that only last year, we were starving. She crossed her arms, shifted her feet, and then tapped her fingers on the window-ledge.

"You must fatten up again and eat more," Temperance insisted, now mixing up some kind of potato dish. "You still look like a half-starved crow. But you are prettier than it. We have plumper frames except for you! Look, eat some biscuits," she insisted a second time, shoving a large plate full of biscuits in front of her face. "In fact, everyone can feast. We have quite enough money from our surplus to buy flour, sugar, baking-soda, rose-water…the usual lot of groceries."

"We are luckier this year, I know. But I can't help feeling that something will happen…just something. Perhaps it is just one of my superstitions or whatnot."

"Banish them and start eating! You must!" Temperance's chuckles turned into laughter, but Beauty could not see why. "You know," her eldest sister grinned—a very pretty grin it was as well—"you and your superstitions shall be correct."

"Well, it is true," she said out aloud, thinking of all the times when her predictions came true. When she was a girl, she had some bad feelings about some nurse or governess, and often turned out to be true, because those governesses and nurses were all fire the day she had those feelings. During her seventeenth birthday, she thought of it and now, two years later, realized that even though she was in a perfectly happy daze, some part had been prepared not to be shocked at the news. There was an ill sense or something in her body.

"I think you're a psychic."

"No! That's the worst type of fake magic there is!"

She went on mixing her batter, roaring with laughter until the beams of the house shook. She was a great deal happier and there was more gaiety in the house, now that sunshine was spreading out her arms to her children to nourish them.

The father was ill, but was beginning to mend. He could name each of his daughters clearly and speak when needed, such as when he was hungry or thirsty or getting even sicker. "I am glad you are here," he once said, and surprised the sisters.

All of them smiled.

The roses were blooming, and Beauty was caught between her desire to let the roses bloom or to help her family. She finally decided to help her family and sadly cut her roses at full bloom and made wreaths. They were sold out by noontime on market-day at Emerald Oak, a friendly village that happened to be the closest as well. The next time, she bought some ribbands and wove them through her wreaths, making them festive and adorned. It looked ridiculous to her eye, but once again, they were all sold out by the time midday struck the big public village-clock.

She had left a few for private enjoyments, and when the roses' petals had fallen, she quickly gathered them up and pressed them between huge sheets of baking pans and pots and regular pans and turned them into potpourri. She sniffed their wild, concentrated, seductive scent at night after she had her round of nightmares; each one more meaningless than the last, and the tears or her hands brought out their scent and comforted her, though she often stayed awake after the nightmares.

Sometime during that summer, a note reached them, by Beauty's hands. She was quite surprised to see that it was from Second-Mate Quincy, her father's friend and ship manager. He said that her father's ship—the _Portia Temperance_—had returned and was waiting for him back in the city. She was a bit worried to show it to her father as she went home from Emerald Oak, the nearest town. She burst in through the door quite dramatically, shouting, "Father, here is a letter!"

The father stood up, read the letter hastily. His expression changed from sorrow to glee and a sense of shock. "I must go at once," he quavered. "I must!"

"No!" The scream came from Temperance and Beauty. "Father, you must rest before going! It'll be winter by the time you arrive there." "Father, please, I beg of you, stay and recuperate before you go off doing some impulsive thing," they both shouted at the same time.

"I am going," he said, his voice firmer and definite. "I will go; I am going in two days."

The packing was very rushed and pell-mell. Beauty was idle; she could not plant nor tend nor weed or do anything useful. She sat on the sofa, feeling depressed and as if a knife had stabbed through her heart and made her weep bitter tears at night. _What if he dies?_ She thought, _what if he is robbed or kidnapped or in gaol or some terrible thing?_ The last two years had been peaceful, if not bountiful, and she hated to think what might happen to her father if he went back to the terrible city. She really did hate to think of such.

Everyone was in a whirl, cooking some food for the journey, dusting everything, plumping the sofa-cushions that Beauty was sitting on, wiping the windows clean, cutting flowers (painfully for Beauty) to give him a as-grand-as-can-be-for-country-rustics sendoff.

The father looked better already but would not eat a bite of the food Temperance made. His whitish-gray hair sprung healthily from his scalp, while his eyes shone dangerously with a sparkling desire. His skin, though still wrinkled, did not sag and his eyesight was greatly improved. He seemed to have gone from invalid to healthily-aged old man in the course of a few hours. None of the sisters noticed except perhaps Beauty, who was sitting there, seeing as she could find nothing to do.

At last came the dawn where he would have a nice, country-rustics sendoff. He woke up before dawn, anxious, excited, thrilled, yet nervous at the same time. He put on his well-worn sturdy and soft leather boots, put on a clean shirt, and put on tidy black breeches, and indeed, he thought, he looked very handsome. When he went downstairs, no one was there, but there were flowers, roses that filled the whole room up.

He thought of going before his daughters woke up, but to surprise and shock them so would be cruel. Besides, surely at least one of his daughters must desire something that they did not have.

He glanced nervously at the roses. The petals had fallen off now or been cut, and the garden looked sorrowfully neglected. His youngest daughter had been very hurt by having to sacrifice her flowers, and now they would not bloom until the next year.

The silence made him nervous, though it was a quiet, polite, sweet-tempered silence that did not mean to hurt anybody or any creature at all. He was perhaps apprehensive about something.

During the space that filled the hour before his daughters woke up, took a short walk, sat on a chair, and stroked his horse in the stable. When he came back, he found his daughters awake and scared for him. Beauty looked languid and depressed, but still worried. "Father," Beauty murmured, seeing that none of the sisters could speak. "Where have you been? We thought that you'd left us behind."

The father looked at the caring faces around him. All of a sudden, he decided that he could not bear to go, not bear to leave his beloved behind, not bear to abandon them for months until he came back. When he put those feelings into words as he ate his final breakfast in Rose Meadow (a most suiting name, but the meadows did not have roses), his daughters told him not to worry; they would get by quite all right by themselves; they had plenty of food; nobody need worry.

Finally, with a bit of unpredicted argument, the father was made to go, but before he saddled his horse, he asked each one of the sisters what she wanted. "A nice hose, sleek and highbred," Temperance said fiercely. "Some lyrics for songs that I might sing," Chastity said shyly. "Some nice, good silk, so long as it's a good color," Virtue said and looked down at her bleeding fingers. "A better glass-cleaner and disinfectant, as silly as that sounds," Mercy muttered with a small snort of amusement at her words. "Something pretty and useful," Hope trilled and clapped her hands once.

"Well, Beauty, you have not said a word," the father said, surprised. "What do you want that I can bring from the city?"

"Roses," she choked out, and looked out to where her roses used to be. Tears streamed down her face as she hugged her father in a big embrace for the last time, perhaps for months and months. She wiped her tears away, took a deep breath, and found that the urge to cry had stopped for now. "There are no roses now, and surely you should be back in three month's time."

"Roses, then," the father replied gruffly. His eyes shone. "Goodbye, dears," he called as he saddled his horse and galloped away.

He galloped along a very wide path for quite a few hours, and he stopped only to relieve himself or to eat, as he had not eaten much breakfast. There was a wide stream gushing and he drank thirstily from it as he went along the wide path.

The wide path was not as nearly clean as it seemed. He was covered with some kind of nasty, disgusting feculence from the trees, and he could not soil the public stream. To do so would be very rude and he was a moral man.

He and his horse galloped on, hooves thudding until nighttime, until he finally rested under a moderately clean tree, laying down his weary body to rest.

Beauty sat down at her chair, numb with shock that her father had gone away. Her body seemed to be consumed by an unnatural force quite disturbing and it was around her sore heart that it bifurcated but wore it down, like a river does to an unnecessary boulder that happened to be in their path. Her heart grew sorer by the hour until she had to clasp her hands to her heart, in bed, to still its wild throbbing. How she wished that she could still its throbbing and just be at rest and not endure any more heartache! She could not sleep, could not think.

As she stared at the ceiling, a few more tears leaked out. She thought herself weak to be doing that, so, with a few small quiet sniffs, she ceased weeping and looked to both sides, with two sisters, one side on each side of her body, breathing quietly and calmly. The sound of breathing and the comforting darkness calmed her excited heart down so much until she felt cold.

The day dawned. The light, no longer gray and dreary, shone in through the wide windows in the attic quite cheerful, bright, gay. It was a strange thing, but her heart seemed to feel less of a boulder and more of a pulse in her body that was needed to live, breathe, think.

He woke up, heartsore for his daughters who all loved him. He stood up, looking around for his stream. He found it, and drank from it. The water was cold, shocking his teeth so, but refreshing, he noticed; he had been too tired yesterday to notice. The water was extremely clean and pure. Perhaps unusually clean and pure.

There was nothing around for days that turned into weeks that turned into months. He only plodded along on his weary horse, tired and sore all over. His clothes were now muddy and somewhat ragged and torn, he admitted humbly and ashamed. For an odd reason, his clothing was the only proof that he was still not a poor (well, wealthy by Emerald Oak's standards, but not quite for city living) near-invalid who had six daughters to support and that he could do nothing to support them. Now, he was as poor as poor could be, with a small cottage the size of two, maybe three large rooms of his mansion when he was a wealthy miser as well as a merchant. For now, he cared nothing about his money; his arrogance had been thrown out of the window with his money, his ignorance dashed like cold water to the harsh reality of his new living situations, his selfishness gone to the sudden awareness of the love, caring, and food that his daughters gave him.

"How could I leave them behind?" he asked himself as his dappled gray horse tiredly dragged and plodded on the long, long road without a bend or twist. "I feel as if I will die," he though despairingly. "I should have stayed home after all, perhaps, and Beauty and Temperance and Virtue and Mercy and Hope and Chastity would have been happier if I had stayed. They were not ecstatic when they heard the news. Good heavens, man, what are you raving about?

"I believe that I would be happier at home instead of here, plodding the long, long way. Goodness, in the mansion, everything was too _neat_ and _orderly_, whereas Rose Meadow, it's comfortably small, with no echoes echoing around and around for seconds, and the small messes there are tidily cozy, and Mercy and Hope see to that the house is dust-free and the window-panes are sparkling and coruscating. Why, even the one stained glass window, with its charming girl with a rose growing out of her heart is clean; the specks of dust that sunlight reveals are nonexistent."

So he thought as he and his horse traveled for hundreds of miles to the city. It was left to the horse to the speed, but the dappled gray flew along in a fast canter, nearly a gallop.

After six weeks, it had to be admitted that the old merchant was rather weary. He only had brought a few francs with him, and although he was not running out any time soon, he did not have much to eat. The horse was happy at night, left to graze on the sweet, lush grass, although as they came nearer and nearer the city, the grass was coming at a shortage.

"Well, I suppose this is some kind of trial," the ex-merchant thought. "Perhaps the Queen of the Skies put me to this kind of trial. Well, this trial is meant to be a trial and nothing else, old man. You had better toughen up, or else you shan't pass."

"I'm getting a job sometime…soon, very soon. Probably today," Temperance announced in a roar.

"What?" all five other sisters exclaimed, not in unison, but the shock and surprise was all there in the voices. No one spoke for a long while that turned into an awkward silence. "You're getting a job?" Mercy sighed. "Now I've got more work."

"No one can cook as well as you," Hope piped.

"Well, that is quite true, even if it comes from my lips." She blushed and shifted her weight on one foot to another. "So, should I go to town and go forthwith to find a job?" she smiled, trying to put a bit of humor in her speech.

Another awkward silence came upon the room again, but this time, Beauty broke it. She was happy for her eldest sister, she really was, but she felt dwarfed by all her sisters' accomplishments. The only accomplishment she had was selling her rose-wreaths. "Well, dear—yes, do go and find something you like to labor at and make it profitable, Temp. We shall miss you. I haven't got any roses, you know, to send you off, but I am sure that on the first day of work, we shall think of something." She scarcely knew what she was saying, and as soon as she said it, she forgot.

"A regular day for work, please," Temperance begged, "I should not like to put any trouble—,"

"No trouble at all," "Of course not!" "Why should you feel as if we put ourselves any trouble?" "We're glad to do it!" So a stream of encouragement came from all the sisters. Beauty encouraged, too, but felt as if she were acting. She was jealous, the bitter feeling in her heart growing as each ingratiating sentence flew from their lips.

After Temperance's speech, she ran up to her bedroom, full of rage that boiled inside of her, and pounded the pole in the middle that divided the loft in two fifty times. When that was over, she was spent of energy, but her heart remained as bitter and strained, and the pounding hadn't given her anything but a sore right hand and she had gotten a large splinter in her fingertip and the splinter hurt. It was deeply wedged in, like her deeply etched jealousy of her sisters who were all above her.

Jealousy taints one's reasoning. "They are all trying to make me feel small and useless," she bitterly thought. "They know I am drab, useless, small, forlorn, and quite a lackwit among them. They are trying to make me jealous and, well…"

Her heart hurt inside again. She sat down on the bed, clasped her hands to her breast once more, and forced her heart to stay in the right place, which was in the middle of her chest.

A rustling and crinkling sound came from her bodice. She pulled the two papers out and read them once more.

Something caught her eye. Some white thing was wedged under a pole. It must have flown there and gotten stuck while it was built. Beauty crouched down next to the pole and tried to pull the paper out. To her surprise, it came out with no effort at all.

On the paper was another poem. It was ripped on the top but fully intact at the bottom. This piece was very large.

_"Trust your eyes not to find and seek_

_The treasure that goes beyond the creek. _

_For unwelcome is his name abroad_

_Called Cheater, No-gooder, and Fraud. _

_"Should he find the grandest bower, _

_And kept up in the largest tower_

_For you alone does he stay_

_For you he will get in the way. _

_"Should you agree to complete the pact, _

_Do not fear, for there is a fact: _

_Find the entangled web inside _

_And you should open the door very wide. _

_"In revealing the truth, it takes time_

_To find out your creature's crime _

_Of the past, it is now the present _

_And you do not have much time to seek His Presence." _

There was something odd about the paper. It was long and it seemed that the three pieces, two in her bodice, one newly discovered, would fit together. She laid the pieces out on the floor, feeling as if nothing could disturb her. The pieces fit perfectly.

Someone was coming up the stairs. Beauty stuffed the papers in her bodice, but made sure they were folded neatly before she did so. "Beauty?"

"Yes, I'm right here," she snapped, annoyed at someone having broken her tranquility.

"What was all the pounding about?" Temperance asked, her face coming into view. Her eyes were red and puffy and no longer looked beautiful. She looked just average. But Beauty still hated her for that.

"Nothing. I've got a splinter." She felt the feeling in her spine to shout, to tell her eldest sister to go away, to leave her alone, but her mouth wouldn't allow it. Tears suddenly pricked her eyes and a large lump set up shop in her throat. She blinked, but it didn't help to hide the tears. One tear rolled down. The second rolled down. The third ran into her mouth and she tasted the salty-sweet tangy flavor of the water.

"Does it hurt so much? Here, let me pull it out for you," she offered and dug her fingernails, the thumb and index, over the splinter, and, with some effort, managed to extricate it. It hurt, but it would heal. When she saw that her sister still was crying and now had (she counted) ten tear streaks down her face, she felt that she could no longer bear seeing the baby of the household cry.

"Just…leave me…alone," Beauty replied.

"But it's dinner-time. There's too much food for me to bring up to here."

"Fine," she said sulkily. "I'll go." She gave a small sob, the pain in her heart being unendurable, and then forced herself to stop her tears and to dry them with her skirt. "Just don't make me do anything I don't want. I shall rebel if you do."

Temperance gave a large and heavy sigh, straight from her heart. Why was her sister acting this way? She hadn't acted this way before. She wanted to know what was wrong, to comfort her youngest, like her mother did when she was small. "But mother is no longer here," she unconsciously said out aloud. Then she looked at her sister, who still looked pretty in spite of her tears. Something bitter churned up in the mix of feelings she had. "Go now—and—don't—talk—back," she said through gritted teeth. "Now!"

Beauty stomped and plodded down the stairs sullenly, walked heavily, pulled out her chair with a large jerk, and threw her body into it.

She knew from the looks of Virtue, Mercy, Temperance (especially), Hope, and Chastity that they were mad as well for putting them in a bad mood, but she ignored them and continued eating the mashed potatoes and bits of meat stew in silence. After a while, she calmed down, but it was only when Chastity (still trying to be cheerful, though it was straining her energy) suggested that she get her bad mood out of the house and perhaps look at some pretty ribbands. After looking at ribbands of all hues, Beauty felt that she was seeing things in black and white and red and blue and green and yellow and that perhaps they had better go home before she went blind.

"Well, are you in a better mood now?" Chastity sang as the wagon she was driving bumped and jerked its way along the narrow path. "Oh, I think we just went over a large pebble," she groaned as the wagon suddenly dropped and made their stomachs lurch.

"I guess," Beauty replied absentmindedly as she gazed at the rows and rows of golden, gleaming wheat and the lush greenness of the grasses. The sky was all ablaze in hues of red, orange, gold, and amber, and she thought that she had never seen such a splendid sunset back in the city; the skyscraper mansions blocked out the sun and at night, the streets were practically as light as day. She no longer felt much jealousy. It had died down to a small bruise in her heart, barely detectable until someone or something touched it. She turned to Chastity. "You aren't mad at me, are you? Just don't lie to me. I hate lies."

"Heh. No, I am not mad at you, no matter what you may think." The tone in her voice was sincere and kind.

"Are you jealous of me? Because you ought not to be. I am nothing compared to you or Virtue or Temperance or Mercy," and she stopped for breath before she continued, for she had said this all in one breath, "and they are much better than me. I am a romantic, which doesn't help anything at all."

"No, I am jealous, perhaps, just a small bit. Your roses are so beautiful, and your pencil drawings in the city were so lovely. Being a romantic does have its benefits. And you know, your voice isn't half bad at all. You can sing soprano, at least. Mercy can't sing much except 'The Queen of the Skies' and 'Gypsies O.'. Sing 'Gypsies O.'"

"Oh, what I care for my house and land, oh, what I care for my treasures, oh. Oh, what I care for my newly wedded lord, I'm off with the raggle-taggle gypsies O!"

"There, you can sing." And with her high angel's voice, Chastity repeated the refrain. "Oh, what I care for my house and land…"

"That's the point," Beauty said.

"What point?"

"You can sing ever so much better. I feel like a peacock compared to you, flaunting my vanity but have nothing to actually be vain about. My vainness is nothing."

"I don't actually think I sing well, though," Chastity said shyly and modestly.

Part of her wanted to kick her sister and part of her wanted to hurt her feelings by saying she was terrible at singing, to confirm her deepest fears. But to do so would be so cruel and yet it would feel satisfying! To be safe, she did neither, but encouraged her, but it cost Beauty so much pain. "You sing like an angel from above."

"The singers in the Queen of the Skies, you mean? Oh, thank you! They are supposed to have the loveliest voices of all."

In her bed that night, Beauty let herself have a good cry and let herself weep for the better part of two hours, but she knew that she had to stop, or else she would go on crying for such a long while. With a Herculaneum effort, she forced herself to stop and scolded herself, saying that she was a silly thing to do so, and she must stop or else. After all, she had cried three times in two months, had she not? Well, the first two times, she had made herself stop before they ran over, but this was the third time and she was indulging in it, perhaps even wallowing pleasurably in her sadness. The scolding did not do much, and her other two sisters came up for bed and inquired why she was crying so; she snapped at them and flew into a passion. "Why is it any of your business?" she asked angrily.

"Dear, we just want to help, but I suppose tomorrow will be better," Hope sighed, and patted her youngest sister's shoulders kindly and pulled her into a hug. She could feel that Beauty was resisting and stopped. "Well, good-night; just don't wake us up with sobbing."

She was left there on the ledge that extended quite a bit over the garden until her tears stopped, which was ten minutes after they had fallen asleep. She looked out to the tranquil, peaceful garden, and felt that the rage in her breast had stopped fully, but the bruise was still there; the damage was done. She looked into the sleeping sisters. There was a candle left on a crate-box that stood in for a bedside table, and the light that it gave had a large range and lit everything up with a gold tint. Beauty stood up, changed into her shift and nightgown, and blew out the flickering candle with a strong breath.

In the city, the merchant felt dwarfed by big buildings the size of many, many Rose Meadows stacked together. The buildings were gold and red brick and white trimmed and enormous. It amused him somewhat to see his old house, still standing there, still beating the test of time. It was not depleted or demolished at all.

"Fraud," someone whispered to his ear. The old ex-merchant looked at the person. It was a handsome man, not particularly intelligent-looking, but more like a brawny, sneering, pompous young man and looked like a fool. "You are a fraud, old man," the young man whispered. Then, he called out to the other people, "Hey! Here is the no-do-gooder, the fraud, the cheater!"

"Right that man is," a pretty girl with cold blue eyes said haughtily. "Recall your days in the city, old man? You're fit for nothing now except a courtesan!" she sneered.

"Oi know," an old, fat, rather bleary-looking woman yelled back. "He's the cheater of the three husbands, mind you—three husbands he cheated!"

"What did I do?" the father thought frantically. "All I did was try to give my daughter good marriages before I came to ruin," he gabbled.

"Ruin. You foresaw it before, didn't you?" another man mocked. "Why don't you just go home, idiot? Yeah, go home."

"I am looking for Second Mate Quincy," he quavered, stepping back two or three tiny steps away from his enemies, "and do you know where he lodges?"

There was one woman, about thirty years of age, very pretty, reminiscent of his daughter Beauty, with curly lunatic fringes in front but with a full long crop of wavy hair that flowed to the small of her back. "I'm his wife, and Second Mate Quincy lodges in the Bucking Pony Inn. Mr. Montgomery, come along with me," she said kindly and ushered him into a spacious, grand (to him only, plain to the rest of the residents) room with a chandelier. The wooden beams were scattered randomly around the inn and the color of the ceiling was a nice, dark, rich mahogany brown.

He recognized the hearty, broad and friendly face of Quincy and sat down in a chair opposite him on the same table. "Quincy, what news have you?" he asked eagerly.

But this Quincy was changed.


End file.
